Adam and Eve is the title of two famous works in different media by Albrecht Dürer, a German artist of the Northern Renaissance: an engraving made in 1504, and a pair of oil-on-panel paintings completed in 1507. The 1504 engraving depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, surrounded by several symbolic animals. The engraving transformed how Adam and Eve were popularly depicted in art.
The 1507 painting in the Museo del Prado offered Dürer another opportunity to depict the ideal human figure in a different medium. Painted in Nuremberg soon after his return from Venice, the panels were influenced by Italian art. Dürer's observations on his second trip to Italy provided him with new approaches to portraying the human form. Here, he depicts the figures at human scale—the first full-scale nude subjects in German painting.
1504 engraving Background Dürer continually sought perfection of form in his work. He traveled to Italy to study the Italian Renaissance masters and incorporate their techniques into his art. His first visited Venice in n 1494 where he studied artists such as Giovanni Bellini (who he met), Andrea Mantegna, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Leonardo da Vinci, and others. One work of art that particularly captured his attention was The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–1486) by Sandro Botticelli. In addition, he was greatly influenced by two ancient classical marble sculptures (both copied after Greek Hellenistic sculptures, now lost) that illustrate the concept of ideal male and female beauty: the Apollo Belvedere (just rediscovered in the 1490s) and the Medici Venus, though Dürer likely discovered these works through second-hand sources, the Apollo for example through an engraving by Nicoletto da Modena of c.1500 or the engraving of Apollo and Diana made by Jacopo de' Barbari around 1503 probably in Nuremberg. This image featured the intricately modeled figure of Apollo in classical contrapposto, inspiring Dürer's interpretation of Adam. Similarly, in Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, the figure of Venus acted as a model for Dürer's later renditions of Eve. Raptured by newfound inspiration, Dürer returned to Nuremberg.
In 1500 Jacopo de' Barbari came to Nuremberg to serve Maximilian I as a court painter. He introduced Dürer to the Vitruvian canon of body proportions and linear perspective.In Dürer's residue were German translations of excerpts of Vitruv's De architectura, and he praised Vitruv in his Underweysung, but denying its dogmatism. Panofsky, p. 265. But Dürer wasn't satisfied and began studies of his own, measuring countless living models (of both men and animals). He summarised his techniques in his Four Books on Human Proportion, and in 1504 completed his first engraving of Adam and Eve (burin on copperplate, 25.1 x 19.8 cm).
Background and context within his œuvre Dürer drew his first full frontal Female Nude in 1493 after a living model, Bernstein calls her Bath Attendant like Meder, due to the turban like headdress. and several subsequent nudes seen from the back, among them an early depiction of Adam and Eve before the Fall.Eve shows her back, both holding an apple. A Drawing now in the collection of the Bibliothèque de l'Ècole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Panofsky, p. 86 and fig. 96. Elaborated works were the drawing of the women in the Women's Bath (1496) and the engraving of The Four Naked Women (1497). These early female nudes were followed by studies of figures with constructed body proportions, even the outlines drawn with ruler and compass, first the Reclining Nude and the engraving of the Nemesis, both from 1501. But the only figure of which the pose relates closely to the Eve is the Venus in the engraving of The Dream of the Doctor (c. 1498), a refined version of one of the Four Naked Women, the body mirrored, now in ideal with lowered shoulder over the supporting leg, the other leg free to move.
As for the Adam, there are several works that followed the same antetype and were likely preparatory. The most prominent one is Apollo with the Solar Disc, one of Dürer's early male figures designed according to classical proportions, where he seemed to have copied de' Barbari freely in showing Diana from behind at Apollo's feet, who is depicted as Sol, since Diana, as a moon goddess, tries to protect herself from his light conquering the day. Dürer obviously was not satisfied, since he didn't finish the drawing. The Apollo he drew again, this time with a bow. Another closely linked study drawing is the Male Nude with Glass and Snake (also called Asclepius) with traces of extensive use of ruler and compass.
His final interpretation of de' Barbari's rather abstract Apollo and Diana is way superior to the original, provoking an emotional impact on the beholder by having the imposing, concentrated and slightly twisted figure of Apollo occupying more than half the space with parts of his hair, his bow and arrow being cut off. Diana is also more prominent, facing the beholder while feeding a deer lying to her feet. But beside his muscularity and the finely tuned textures there is no similarity to the posture of the Adam. The Apollo has even been finished later and is an advancement compared to the Adam, harmonizing classical stature with Northern emotion.
Imagery, style and technique The engraving captures an idealistic Adam and Eve before the Fall of Man. Adam and Eve are depicted as the ideal body shape of both man and woman respectively. This engraving was one of the first depictions of Adam and Eve that focused on human physical beauty rather than the depiction of sin, causing many artists to later draw inspiration from this perspective shift. As the first man and woman sculpted by God, Adam and Eve serve as the perfect characters to embody the ideal human figure.
Both figures are nude and posed in antique . They are shown full frontal, with their heads in profile facing each other, accentuated by a slight tilt of their bodies. Since he wanted to show these ideal specimen of men there is no overlapping of the figures and can each be seen in full view, except for their genitals, which had to be covered. Dürer, wielding an astonishing technical sophistication, uses the engraved line work to play with light and dark shadows, illuminating the pale skin and modeling the musculature of each body. The bright figures stand out in front of the dark background of the forest that (nearly) completely fills the plate, just like oil paint covers a panel all over.
Dürer made separate preparatory drawings for each figure. Two trial proofs survived that he printed while he was still working on the engraving. They show his specific proceedings in both working stages. The unique trial prints reveal, besides the scrupulously incremental procedure, for example, that the cat was only added later. In the case of the drawings he first constructed a body with ruler and compass on one side of a sheet. Then he traced the outlines of the figure onto the reverse, where he modeled the actual three-dimensional body with hatchings, and washed a dark background with a brush. Contrary to the Adam, Dürer hadn't found the right pose for the Eve yet, but it seemed to be clear, that he didn't want to follow the model of the Venus pudica, which covers her breast.
In a later stage two sheets with figure studies of both figures he joined with a third strip of paper, afterwards washing the background resulting in a single image. The apple Adam still holds in his hand, now corresponds with the one in Eve's hand, as if the sin was evenly shared. In the final engraving nevertheless Eve will be responsible.
Adam is depicted more lean, muscular and about the height of the forehead larger than Eve, while her body is more supple and rounded. Dürer gained the "silken softness" of her skin through finer graded lines that in part "dissolve in stipples, and [by] add[ing] a third series of curves" which densifies the hatching patterns. Erwin Panofsky estimated "twice or three times as many lines per square inch as in earlier [engravings]." This technique he had trained since around 1500 expanded the spectrum of light values on both ends and allowed even more detailed and differentiated textures.
Symbolism Adam and Eve are shown in the Garden of Eden. As the image is a depiction of humanity before the Fall, everything remains in perfect harmony. Placed directly between the pair of figures stands a fig tree, the Tree of Knowledge, but is represented here, as was usual, as a hybrid since the fruit of the tree is apple. Eve is offered a fruit by the snake and holds in her left hand already one tied to a broken branch with fig leaves that cover her genitals. It is a direct reference to the shame that Adam and Eve would experience after the Fall, as described in Genesis 3:7: "And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." The Forbidden Fruit in her left (sinister in Latin) hand, that she is about to share with Adam, symbolizes evil. Adam's genitals are covered by a shoot of a mountain ash that frames the left side of the picture. The tree symbolizes the Tree of Life.
On the tree above the plaque with Dürer's autograph sits a parrot. Since around 1500 Dürer had an increased interest in animals and plants, of which he made many drawings and watercolors. The famous Great Piece of Turf for example, the Young Hare, and the Wing of a Blue Roller are from that time, but also a drawing of a parrot, that very much resembles the one in the engraving. Parrots can symbolize different ideas, including: wisdom, the Word of God, Christ, eternal life, and paradise. But it could also refer to the New World. At this time, the colonization of the New World was in full swing and certain objects from the Americas came to symbolize paradise, as Europeans had come to believe paradise would be found in the Americas. Thus, certain objects that originated from the New World became common symbols of paradise in art, a possible meaning for the parrot represented here. Moreover, it is known through his diary writings that Dürer saw and even collected exotic items from the East (the Orient), as well as the Americas while on trips to both Italy and Flanders. Some of these marvelous objects included a large fishbone, porcelain dishes from China, while other items like cloths (some made out of silk), feathers, an ivory salt-cellar came from "Calicut," which in the Renaissance was a catch-all term that could reference India, Africa or the Americas, indicating a geographical misunderstanding of the wider world.
Around Adam and Eve lie four animals representing the four humors or temperaments. The cat symbolizes the choleric humor, the rabbit the sanguine (from Latin , "of blood": vivacious) temperament, the ox phlegmatic humor, while the elk represents melancholy. Although the contemporary belief was that an imbalance of bodily fluids caused undesirable humors, in Eden, everything is in perfect harmony. Visually, this is represented by the peaceful cohabitant nature of the animals: the cat is not pouncing on the mouse, the ox is sitting calmly. This representation of balanced harmony, however, would be forever destroyed once the Fall occurred. Finally, the relationship of the mouse and feline at the feet of the figures parallels that of Adam and Eve.
The small plaque ( in Italian) is his first inscription in an engraving written in Latin, it reads "Albert Dürer noricvs faciebat 1504," which translates to "Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg was making [this in] 1504." Despite Dürer's fascination with Italian art, this inscription demonstrates his pride regarding his Northern heritage, clearly identifying his hometown as the German city of Nuremberg (Noricus in Latin). Moreover, Dürer is subtly flaunting the immortality of his work since the plaque is attached to the Tree of Life.